


Jake English: A Tragic American Blog Post

by oxfordRoulette



Category: Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton, Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crack, F/M, Humor, Parody, Red Pickle Dishes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-17
Updated: 2012-11-06
Packaged: 2017-11-14 10:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/514192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxfordRoulette/pseuds/oxfordRoulette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jake English is a sharply etched blog post characterizing monochrome small town America by capitalizing on an old man and ad revenue.  The protagonist, Jake English, is a man tormented by a passionate love for the radical skateboarder and general hottie Latula Pyrope, but is already engaged in matrimonial relations with his ailing cousin. Trapped by the sweet scent of tubular railing grinds on one hand, and duties to his queen of baking from a box on the other, Jake is ultimately destroyed by his chance at happiness.<br/>Also a tree. He is mostly destroyed by a tree.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, you probably won't understand this if you haven't read Ethan Frome or a lot of gothic rural America fiction.
> 
> Literally written only so I can write the part where Jake and Latula skateboard-suicide into an elm tree.

I compiled this story for my blog, piece by shoddingly molecular piece, from various homebros and dimwits. If you grew up in America's white bread region, otherwise known as New England, you might remember the town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. It had like, a post office. And lots of fields, which were stark, man. Just, so stark. And if you remember the completely colorless town of Starkfield, you probably remember the crazy old dude with a mustache and face that could choke a family of mice: Jake English.

He was the reason I, David Strider, came here. I heard rumors of a man with a strange backstory and even stranger relations, and I thought, hot damn, think of the advertisement revenue if this were a blog post. Cranky old men with ghosts in the closet? I will spoonfeed the internet this shit and they will coo and stare into my shades and fall into sweet, virtual, baby love.

The first time I saw him, he was hobbling around on a broadsword he thought was a cane. English almost stabbed my foot so I said, “Hey, Gandalf, why the fuck are you leaning on Glamdring the Foe-Hammer? You were six inches away from slaying the Witch-King that is my foot.”

“I once had a smash-up!” he screamed, referencing something everyone in the damn town knew already and would only reveal to me in mysterious clues and foreshadowing. I figured whatever it was must have caused him to hit his head a little too hard. Also his face looked like if Crookshanks were a white male, age 120, so he must have hit his head really, really hard.

I whipped out my iPhone, snapping a picture of his scrunched up form and safari outfit. Good God, he was so wrinkly he could pass as a 90's tween denim fashion accessory.

“If you have an iHop,” he yelled. “That means you can provide music while I drive!”

“What?”

“DRIVE WITH ME.”

The old man was obviously already off his rocker, rolling on the floor, and looking for his LifeAlert wristband. I thought this would help me get many a hit for my blog, so I agreed to carpool with the guy to town.

During my stay in Starkfield, I lived with a babe named Ms. Porrim Maryam. She told me of the town, its people, and which ones were sexist assholes who couldn’t leave their “traditional values” behind.

“He tries, you know?” she told me on one of our many mocha latte trips to the nearest Starbucks, 20 miles away. “But Kankri is just stuck in the past, like the rest of this damn town.”

“Why don't you leave?”

“None of us leave, only the smart ones. I thought Jake would get out, but then that accident happened. It was his fault though, I don't care if society sees her as the temptress, the whole thing was caused by the saturation of patriarchy in the modern family.”

She spent the rest of the drive preaching equality at me and I regretted drinking all that coffee since I couldn't feign sleep on the return trip.

As for the romantic carpools with Jake English, I discovered the man had an incredible karaoke voice. I learned nothing of his own life from the man, so my days in town were spent asking folks for the latest gossip.

After a few weeks, winter hit like a wet fleece blanket your douchebag friend threw on you when you were 6. Jake was driving me home when we were confronted with a bitch of a storm. I've traveled around all my life, so I thought I've seen the worst nature could teabag me with, but this was like, Little House on the Prarie: The Long Winterpocolypse. Without saying a word, English turned the vehicle around, and let the rotten wheels turn down a road I've never seen before. Now, I, Dave Strider, have seen enough horror movies to know where this was going, so I readied the broadsword English kept in the backseat.

We pulled up in front of an old farm, lights barely visible in the storm, and English led me inside. I figured this was his house, and he was offering me a place to stay.

It was that night that I found the clue to Jake English, and began to put together one hell of a blog post.


	2. Small Town Blue Balls

The town lay under two feet of snow, with melted slush sticking to the corners of everyone’s boots and generally putting the population in a bad mood. The moon had set, but the stars shone out like special snowflakes in a crowd of women who buy clothes from Abercrombie, and the path was visible. Young Jake English walked down the abandoned street, glancing into windows and generally feeling vulgar. It was not his fault he was shitty at directions, but he figured he would find his way by just kind of walking until he saw someplace that looked like a dance hall.

Jake English, however, forgot that this was an American blog post, and all good American parties take place in Good Protestant Church Basements. Coincidentally, all American tragedies also begin in church basements, but Jake did not read enough small town murder mysteries to know this. English didn't read much of anything, in fact. He had skipped town a few years ago to study film. Since this was the early 20's, and also because film studies is a terrible major, his grandpappy up and died out of the sheer liberal arts terror generated by Jake.

Jake had to preemptively cut off his studies and move back to town to take care of his near-death grandmother, but that still didn't stop him from making the occasional relevant pop culture reference.

Jake arrived at the doors of the old church. He snuck around the side of the building, keeping the midnight silence perfectly pristine, and peeped into the window of the Church Basement.

Compared to the balls freezing weather outside, it seemed the fires of hell were raging on the inside. The ovens were roaring, the dancers were sweating, the music was “devil went down to Georgia” level insane, clothes were being loosened, and things were getting... um...

English felt himself popping a boner.

“Not now,” he hissed down at his crotch. He hoped the Good Protestant Church Basement did not have any cherubic related enchantments on it, otherwise he would be instantly smote.

The devil's music came to a halt, and Jake felt his yogurt shooter loosening its tight grip. The woman who played the fiddle immediately went to the dessert table and slammed her face into the Good Protestant Dessert Bars and JELL-O Salads. The guests, embarrassed at her behavior, began to pack up their things and get on their merry way. However, a troll clapping in the middle of the dance floor distracted them from their coat getting-on and hat wearing. Signaled by this, the musician returned to her post, cubes of JELL-O dripping down her gaping maw and into her fiddle. The nubby-horned man took a look around the dance floor, apologizing excessively to the men and women he did not want to dance with, and selected a troll with cherry glasses.

Jake's pocket rocket blasted off again.

This beautiful troll, this gorgeous creature, this was the reason Jake English came tonight. She was the light of his life and fire of his loins. His sin, his soul. La-tu-la. And right now, another man had her hand as they spun around the dance floor.

His name was Kankri, son of a preacher that came into town and slept around with a few too many converts. Kankri's father opened a business and it looked like the son was to follow in his footsteps, if the son wasn't the most revolting heap of shit Jake had ever come into contact with. Now that Kankri's poop hands were touching the gray porcelain protrusion that was Latula, Jake almost vomited all over the window.

Jake was surprised Latula didn't notice the stench coming off of shitstain nuberston, but then he remembered her crippling disability. He helplessly watched as Latula laughed in the arms of a boy she should never have turned her eyes upon.

English was in the habit of walking into Starkfield to fetch his wife's rad cousin, Latula Pyrope, on the rare evenings when some semblance of entertainment phased its way into the town. Jake's wife was the one who suggested the girl needed to get out more, in order to stop her from grinding all over the countertops. When Jake first started accompanying Latula to Starkfield, he was filled with the remorse of having to move his lazy ass out of the couch which molded to his butt perfectly. That soon changed when he experienced the full experience of the Latula experience.

Latula had lived in his house for a year. While they had many moments in contact with one another, Jake's wife would always be a massive cockblock. The only time Jake and Latula were truly alone, was on the way back from whatever entertainment the girl had run off to. They would stand on Latula's skateboard and ride down the silent streets, screaming profanities at whatever rocks dared to come into contact with the wheels. It was very romantic, Jake thought. Almost as romantic as the first time they met. She had come off the train, jumping out of the window and onto a innocent pedestrian below, yelling, “You must be Engish!” Jake wanted to kiss her face right there and then.

As he stood in the darkness outside the church these memories came back with the poignancy of weeks of blue balls. He watched her spin around and around with Kankri. He even noticed two or three gestures which, in his fatuity, he had thought she kept for him: a way of throwing her head back when she was listening to something about games, and a trick of flaring her nostrils dramatically when anything charmed or moved her.

It made him deeply unhappy. His wife had never been jealous of Latula, but she had lately been grumbling over the lack of competence Latula displayed when presented with... well, anything. Latula was not very competent. She gave no shits about housework, and Jake always wondered why the hell his wife volunteered that specific cousin for being a live-in maid and caretaker. Jane had always been rather sickly, a diet of cakes proving to be her downfall. Latula was never a huge help, but Jake had done his best to secretly add in his efforts to keep the sexy lady around.

Lately, Jane had been displeased, talking about marrying Latula off to her many suitors. A special girl like Latula had many gentleman callers. Jake had taken to shaving every day for her, and he wasn't about to let some scratchy faced newcomer take his crush from the recesses of his smooth-as-a-baby’s-bottom chin. He thought nothing of his “dear wife” Jane, and how she felt about his deliciously scrumptious lower face. Jane herself, from an oppressive reality, had faded into an insubstantial shade. All his life was lived in the sight and sheer radness of Latula Pyrope, and he could no longer conceive of its being otherwise. But now, as he stood outside the church, and saw Latula spinning down the floor with shitstain shit butt, a throng of disregarded hints and menaces wove their cloud about his brain....


	3. Dead People Are Symbolic, Much Like This Fic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How could I have abandoned this fic? This is genius. I can only hope to live up to my 2012 self.

As the dancers poured out of the hall, Jake, concealing his boner under a strategically placed snow clump, watched the muffled groups for any sign of his hottie with a body. 

"Ain't you drivin' home, Tula?" the fiddler's voice called from the church.

"Hell naw, I gotta practice skateboarding in the snow!" she paused. "There's gotta be a shorter name for that sport... snow-skateboarding, skatesnowing, snowskating... Huh, I guess there isn't a simple word to describe the act of riding the snow with a board. Whatevs, tru go-girls don't need word mashups."

Her smart mind and even smarter conversation was only a wall away. Jake, hit with a sudden bout of shyness from the thought of her erotically square glasses, remained hidden in a shadows. Latula emerged from the Protestant Basement cocoon, delicately burping as her feet left tracks in the snow. She looked around, wondering where Jake could be. A figure approached her under the moonlight. Jake was positive even her dead nose cells could pick up the smell of shit.

"Latula, it appears your gentleman friend did not arrive. Assuming this relationship is just a friendship, or even at that level, since I am well aware of the 'tiers of relationship' triggers. Please inform me if my mentioning of your relationship with English has a negative effect on your psyche. I will not tell the others of your suffering by being left alone, unless if you want to be left alone, of course, but I will leave my conversation with others about your trollhood at the lowest level possible. However, if you would like any sort of ride back to your house, unless if your house is triggering for you, I am freely available to deliver you to a safe environment."

Jake English hated Kankri.

“Whoa, is that your cool car, Kankri?” Latula asked. “I didn't know you could drive."

"While I completely disagree with everything automobiles stand for --namely scaring horses, the innocent death of insects upon your forehead as you drive, and the noise pollution which creates more privilege in the noise hearing community-- my father forced me to take the car today due to the weather, as I am not wearing a shirt, I am only wearing stylish pants."

It was true, Kankri was actually 3/4ths naked the whole time. Jake did not realize this until now.

"Why ever did you ask? Would you like a ride home? Assuming you want to go back to your home, or maybe you want to go to a supportive center due to your disability, please let me know.” Kankri, in his triumph, tried to put a sentimental note into his bragging voice. 

Latula seemed to hesitate, her square glasses reflecting the shine of Kankri's pathetic nubs. Jake English held his breath, his life hanging on Latula's next move.

Latula watched him go to the car, no longer looking around for Jake. Kankri gestured to let her know the car was ready, and she smiled. Then, with a swift movement, she turned about and darted up the slope toward the front of the church.

“Hahaha, sucker!!! Your car is lame!” she called to him over her shoulder.

“I am extremely triggered by your use of the word, 'lame,' Latula. I don't think you are using that word as something you are trying to reclaim. Please get in the car so I can discuss this further.”

“Nope, I'm not getting in your car!”

Kankri chased after her, yelling about the correct use of insults, but was slow and weak and could not run nearly as fast. English's heart, which had stopped for a while, finally returned to a safe space. Kankri sighed and returned to his car, cringing with each puff of the motor as he drove away.

He caught up with Latula under the shade of some pine trees.

“Thought I'd forgotten you, girly?” he asked, pointing at her and winking.

“Why is your crotch wet? Did Jane do something to it?”

“Uh, no. I... pissed myself?”

“Hardcore!” Latula high-fived him. “I knew Jane wasn't feeling great, I thought she kept you at home.”

“No, she went straight off to sleep.” He paused, thinking of sleeping in the same bed as Latula. “Would you have walked home by your lonesome if I hadn't come?”

“Pshh, I ain't afraid, bitch!”

He thought of Kankri unlocking his chastity belt with Latula. “If I hadn't come, would you have ridden home with Vantas?”

“Ha! How did you know that? Hey, brah, where were you hiding anyway?”

She laughed and Jake had the sense of having done something violently ingenious. To prolong the effect he groped for a dazzling phrase. “Lets walk the chalk now.”

Jake wondered where the fuck he learned these words, as his arm slipped through hers. The stars lit up her strong cheekbones and sent rays from her sunglasses sparkling into the snow. He longed to rub his cheek against her scarf for a few hours, a gesture representative of his repressed sexuality reminiscent of the 1700's. Latula pulled a skateboard from her bra.

“Everybody was sledding around before the dance,” she said.

“Maybe we can do a similar activity, but with your skateboard tomorrow?”

“That would be so flippin' sweet! We can school these townies with our sweet tandem boarding skillz.”

“We can go tomorrow if it's a full moon!”

“Damara and Rufioh almost ran into that big elm at the bottom of the hill. Pretty sure Damara was driving and tried to kill them both out of some elaborate vengeance plot. That would have been super negative, they're like... uh... the perfect couple??”

“I can steer jolly well, Latula! I can assure you I have no grudges, so we shall have ourselves a merry skateboard down that merry hill! We will look that tree in the face and laugh at it."

Jake laughed, as an example, and also because there was no way this was foreshadowing in any sense of the term. That would just be too obvious.

"Yeah, I ain't afraid with you, Jake!" she said, suddenly skipping ahead as olden day manic pixie dream girls are wont to do.

These alterations of mood were the despair and joy of Jake English. The motions of her mind were as incalculable as the flit of a bird in the branches. Besides, he was the epitome of a sheltered turn of the century masculinity trope and couldn't express his own feelings and therefore had to project them on her. He wavered back and forth upon the deadly train of thought: "does she like me? does she not?" that eight year olds with daises and murderous intentions are prone towards. He couldn't tell because feelings weren't for Men. They climbed School House Hill, a picturesque example of how terribly named every piece of landscape in rural Americana is; then the need of some definite assurance grew too strong for him.

"You'd have found me right off if you hadn't gone back to have that last reel with Kankri," he brought out awkwardly.

"What the fuck were those words that just came out of your mouth," said Latula.

"I suppose it's true then! You hate us!" he jerked out, sobbing. "You're going to leave our pleasant little home!"

She shrugged. "I guess, I mean, ya'll kinda suck. It's tragically snowing like, 24/7. Everything's in grayscale for no reason. I think Jane is jealous of my girlish spunk or something. You're kinda hot though, that's why I stick around. Also, like, single woman in the twenties? Hell-o, life kinda sucks for me."

Jake's delicate sensibilities could not handle her upfront confession, so he chose to ignore them. He struggled for the all-expressive word, and again, his arm in hers, found only a deep "Come along." He quivered at the feeling of her warm veins pulsing with blood. Romance was here, and it was them.

They walked on in silence through the blackness of the hemlock-shaded lane, where Jake's sawmill gloomed (Is 'gloomed' a verb now? How passé) through the night, and out again into the comparative clearness of the fields. Jake began to notice that everything, was, in fact, in grayscale, and would have made an apt comparison to _Schindler's List_ if that movie had been made in the 20s. They walked through literal paragraphs of bland farm field scenery. It was so boring. So very boring.

Except for the part where they walked through the graveyard. They turned in at the gate and passed under the shaded knoll where, enclosed in a low fence, the English/Harley gravestones slanted at crazy angles through the snow. Jake looked at them curiously. For years that quiet company had mocked his restlessness, his desire for change and freedom. "We never got away—how should you?" seemed to be written on every headstone; in fact it was literally written on Grandma Jade's grave because she was always the kookiest old broad. Whenever he went in or out of this gate he thought with a shiver: "Symbolism." But now it gave him comfort, because he would never leave this town, and apparently living in Massachusetts is like being dead.

"I guess we'll never let you go, Latula," he said, staring obviously at the gravestones. "We'll always go on living here together, and some day you'll lie there beside me. Let's make a winter-themed suicide pact."

"Wuhhuuuuh?"

"Bejezzus! Did I say that out loud? Uh, hold... me?"

For the first time he stole his arm about her, and she did not resist. The wave of warmth that went through him was like the prolongation of his vision. They walked on as if they were floating on a summer stream. He imagined them lying in a grave together as they climbed the hill to his house. This was only served to intensify the joyous and surreal feelings in his heart, for he could picture nothing more romantic than two corpses rotting next to each other; their hands barely touching, their unliving skin turning blue in the cold. Latula... with blue skin... Like sweet blueberry pie. Mmm.

Jane always went to bed as soon as she had had her supper, and the shutterless windows of the house were dark. A dead cucumber-vine dangled from the porch like the crape streamer tied to the door for a death, and the thought flashed through Jake's brain: "More symbolism." Then he had a distinct sight of his wife lying in their bedroom asleep, her mouth slightly open, dreaming of the day when instant cake mix would be invented.

They walked around to the back of the house, between the rigid gooseberry bushes. It was Jane's habit, when they came back late from the village, to leave the key of the kitchen door under the mat. Jake stood before the door, his head heavy with dreams, his arm still about Latula. They were about to break into extramarital intercourse at any moment. "'Tula—" he began, not knowing what he meant to say. 

She slipped out of his hold without speaking, since he was doing that creepy hover-hand thing this entire time, and he stooped down and felt for the key.

"It's not there!" he said, straightening himself with a start.

They strained their eyes at each other through the icy darkness. Such a thing had never happened before. A crushing silence settled around them.

"That massive beeotch," Latula screamed. A flock of crows arose from the desolate wasteland that surrounded them. "I should kick her teeth in!"

The door of the house then opened, and Jake saw his wife. Against the dark background of the kitchen she stood up tall and angular, one hand drawing a quilted counterpane to her flat breast, while the other held a lamp. The light, on a level with her chin, drew out of the darkness her puckered throat and the projecting wrist of the hand that clutched the quilt, and deepened fantastically the hollows and prominences of her high-boned face under its ring of crimping-pins. Blah blah, okay old man, we get it, she was ugly. No need to ramble about it for six sentences.

"I'm the huge bitchy bitch bitch character in this story? Again? Seriously?" said Jane, introducing herself with the kind of deadpan voice one would use when reading through the genealogy records in Kings I. She sighed and rubbed her temples, trying not to disturb her 'wicked witch' face makeup she so carefully applied for the next morning's children's book fair, and continued. "Well, it's me. The bitchy wife. I suppose I have to make it transparently obvious, then."

"Guess you forgot about us, Jane," Jake joked, stamping the snow from his boots.

"No. I just felt so mean I couldn't sleep." said Jane, quoting the original book verbatim.

Latula came forward, unwinding her wraps, the color of the cherry scarf in her fresh lips and cheeks. "Sowwy."

"You are not forgiven, harlot," said Jane, with the same conviction as a customer service representative after a ten hour day. She sighed again. "Well, Jake, we've got a long morning ahead of us, I say we head to bed."

He pointed to Latula. "By gum, I am wholeheartedly against that directive! I want to engage in elaborate adulterous sex metaphors with 'Tula instead."

"Not until chapter four, dear. Also if you stay out now, you'll ketch your death," Jane said with a k.

Without answering he moved away toward the kitchen. As he did so his glance crossed Latula's and he fancied that a fugitive warning gleamed through her lashes. The next moment they sank to her flushed cheeks and she began to mount the stairs ahead of Jane.

"That's so. I might freeze, and then my skin will turn blue. Mmm." Jake shivered succulently; and with lowered head he went up in his wife's wake, and followed her across the threshold of their room.


End file.
